Richard Wilson

Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Richard Wilson: Counterpoint. Richard Wilson’s painting has long been informed by music—the structure of classical compositions and the improvisational stylings of jazz play out in the artist’s richly harmonized canvases. In his recent work, Wilson has focused his attentions on musical counterpoint: the arrangement of two or more rhythmically independent yet harmonically related parts, combined to create a meaningful whole.

Wilson’s pristine surfaces, which lately are executed on multiple joined canvases, are the perfect avenue for these musical investigations. In these paintings, color and form create an optical parallel to melody and rhythm. Discrete yet kindred canvases are bolted together so smoothly that they form a seamless edifice from afar, revealing their structural independence at close range. Hard-edged rectilinear passages of brick red, goldenrod, lilac and tangerine create lush harmonies, augmented by their arrangement in studied asymmetry. The colors are so flawlessly applied that they appear not man-made, but essential forces harnessed at the artist’s hand. Outgrowths of his Pond series, the earthy colors in these works carry through Wilson’s observations of the perfectly tuned visual sequences found in natural landscapes.

Richard Wilson is a Professor Emeritus at Shasta College, and has been a guest lecturer at Monterey Museum of Art, Claremont Graduate University, University of the Pacific, and Cabrillo College. Works by Wilson are held in the collections of Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, IN; Downey Art Museum, Downey, CA; Redding Museum and Art Center, Redding, CA; and San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, among other public and private collections.